USAID Advancing Nutrition Ghana has presented the Ghana Health Service (GHS) with 139,000 maternal and child health record books to improve the quality of nutrition service delivery, especially to pregnant women, lactating mothers, and children under the age of five.
These books, which are essential for nutrition counselling, recording growth data of children, and other services, are being distributed to 590 health facilities across 17 districts in the Northern, North East, Upper East, and Upper West regions of Ghana.
Dr. Zohra Balsara, the Health, Population, and Nutrition Office Director of USAID’s Mission in Ghana, said the materials are “designed to better capture the continuum of care across maternal, newborn, and child health services, including antenatal care during pregnancy, delivery with assistance of a skilled birth attendant, postnatal care, and child growth and development checks.
“They help mothers and caregivers track services, from pregnancy through the child’s first years of life, to ensure that children thrive. USAID is committed to continuing to work with the Ghana Health Service to improve the health and wellbeing of all Ghanaians,” she added.
The Director General of the GHS, Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, who received the books, commended USAID for its efforts to address malnutrition in Ghana and reiterated the GHS’ commitment to work with USAID to achieve their collective goal.
Chief of Party for USAID Advancing Nutrition Ghana, Mr. Selorme Kofi Azumah, explained that the project has also supported the GHS to train 850 newly-recruited health workers on how to use the record books for counseling and recording, analyzing, reporting, and using data to enhance decision making.
He said, in addition to the record books, the project has given the GHS counseling cards, antenatal registers, bin cards, outpatient care protocols, and other materials that enhance data capture and the quality of care to women and children. These resources are meant to help Ghana in its efforts to fight malnutrition, which remains a major development concern due to the prevalence of anemia, stunting, wasting, among others.